


6.706e+8 mph

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Series: Sybil and Havelock in the Ramtops [1]
Category: Discworld
Genre: Counting in three languages, Gen, Lightning is scary above the tree line
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26146486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: The light of lightning was the only light on the Disc that moved at the speed of light in the rest of the universe.
Relationships: Sybil Ramkin & Havelock Vetinari
Series: Sybil and Havelock in the Ramtops [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959418
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	6.706e+8 mph

It was a dark and stormy night. 

In a tent in the Ramtop mountains a boy and a girl were clinging to each other.

“Stop counting!” the girl intoned in a voice that would make any younger child immediately freeze and confess their most concealed wrongdoings.

“Quattordici, quindici—can’t— uno, due, tre” the boy said in an exhausted voice, as thunder boomed twice, shaking the ground beneath them and lightning filled the tent with white light even behind closed eyelids. 

The light of lightning was the only light on the Disc that moved at the speed of light in the rest of the universe. The slowest was sunlight, which moved at the speed of sound, the light of flames was somewhere in between, but no one noticed that because flames were so close. The reason the light of lightning moved so fast was so people could tell how far away it was by counting.

A double burst of lightning came again and he counted from the earlier one. “three—if I stop I can’t tell if the storm’s moving towards or away from us— ten, eleven” thunder roared this time overhead from the left of the tent.

“I think it’s safe to say that it’s on top of us and there’s nothing we can do.” The girl touched the canvas floor of the tent where water welled up in swells that would soak through if either of them moved.

Another flash, illuminating thin hands with hollows between tendons, burying themselves in the folds of the girl’s flannel nightdress, which was the color of the Ankh-Morpork flag, vermillion faded to pink-orange. 

“Wahid, athnyn, thlath,” the ground shook again. “Three?” 

“It’s like being holed up with a dragon. You’re trembling, Havelock.”

The boy breathed like he was waiting for his head to be forced underwater. “There’s not anything I can do against lightning.”

“You could pray.”

“Not a chance.”

“It is easy to be brave when a terrified person has attached themself to you like a baby monkey.”

Havelock felt both of her hands against his ribs. “I think you have instincts I don’t have, Sybil. I don’t have any baby monkey—“ 

More lightning. Sybil noticed he flinched at the light, not at the sound. “One, two—“

“But it doesn’t help if they insist on letting you know how close you are to being electrocuted to death.”

“Sorry—six, seven—“ thunder rolled. “Seven? I hate this. I want to go home.”

“I realize it’s probably a self-soothing thing or a compulsion...”

Havelock lay his forehead against Sybil’s shoulder. His hair was still curled from being tied in knots with heated linen two days earlier. Sybil’s hair was cut short for the first time.

“I want to sleep but I feel... what’s the word... un farò... lighthouse... like a lighthouse in my head.”

Under the roar of the rain the teenage assassin heard the whine of a mosquito near the Lady Sybil’s neck and snatched it out of the air between two fingers. “Thirty-seven,” he intoned solemnly. 

She giggled.


End file.
